Saying NO to what’s not true, making room for YES!

I was having a conversation in the car with my friend, Janet Conner. (If her name sounds familiar, she’s the author of the book, Writing Down Your Soul. I’ve interviewed her more than once about her soul writing process. She’s a good friend of mine and I love her work.)

Back to the car.

We always have wild conversations on the way to yoga, which is about an hour each way. Yes, I’m sure we could find yoga closer to home, but we really love this particular yoga and the yogini who teaches the class and the time together when we can both make it work.

So we drive to yoga and talk about everything from mystical poetry or her latest radio show guest to our businesses and lives.

I always end our time together pondering something.

On this particular ride, we were talking about Matthew Fox and how he had discussed the idea of the “Warrior’s No” and the “Mystic’s Yes” on her radio show, The Soul Directed Life. The conversation had left her considering that if she says yes to everything, she’s really saying no to everything because she can’t do it all. No one can. We’re taught to not say no growing up, in subtle and less subtle ways, and that saying yes is good.

But she shared that she was really beginning to understand the importance of saying no so that when she says yes, she really means it.

I went home full of thunder, asking myself what my “No’s” and what my “Yes’s” are right now.

I scribbled it all out on paper (yes, I still use pens and write on paper. Love it.) and stared back at my list. It was really clear.

My list

I say YES to time with my family.
I say YES to simplifying.
I say YES to my work, which I love.
I say YES to writing, which helps to spread my work and connects me to people who need support.
I say YES to time with my husband.
I say YES to healthy food and time to prepare it.
I say NO to the big house, pool, bushes, grass that needs cut, and pool deck that needs pressure washed.
I say NO to working late into the night more days than not to pay the bills.
I say NO to worrying about money.
I say NO to the stress of taking care of all the things I own.
I say YES to consciously choosing what I’d like to keep and what I want to release.
I say YES to myself and my sanity.

So it became really clear to me what needed to happen. While it’s true that the timing isn’t quite what we were expecting, this is something that I am saying YES to. We’re saying YES to traveling as a family (yes, the big one stays home to start his senior year and that isn’t ideal, but we’re planning a big trip when he finishes school next May and this arrangement lets him have more time with his dad and he can continue to work his job cooking at a restaurant).

My yes’s and no’s are pretty big. How does your list look? What do you know to be true in your life? What are you trying to figure out?

Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Rebecca is the founder of The Consciously Parenting Project, LLC, and author of 3 books (Consciously Parenting: What it really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families, Creating Connection: Essential Tools for Growing Families through Conception, Birth and Beyond, and Nurturing Connection: What Parents Need to Know about Emotional Expression and Bonding), numerous classes and recordings, and the former co-host of a radio show, True North Parents.

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